


Under Apple Trees and Across Galaxies

by haraya



Series: Just a Moment in the Light [1]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Earthborn (Mass Effect), F/M, Fluff and Angst, War Hero (Mass Effect)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-24
Updated: 2016-05-25
Packaged: 2018-06-08 19:14:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6870058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haraya/pseuds/haraya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three years, three galactic crises, three lives—two for her, one for him. The road to saving the galaxy takes them to the strangest places, but when the chips are down, they know how to find their way home. </p><p>Kaidan, Shepard, and how true love always comes back around. </p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic covers Kaidan and Shepard's relationship from ME1 to ME3. It's mostly done, so I'll probably post the remaining chapters one per day.
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

Love hits him like a storm.  
  
It builds up - electricity in the air and a change in the wind from the moment she pushes him out of harm's way on Eden Prime.  
  
He hovers over her in the med-bay, fielding questions from Chakwas and Anderson and stomping down on the guilt rising in his throat. He worries that he may have put the potential first human Spectre out of duty.  
  
It's stupid, in retrospect. She's Shepard, after all, and she didn't make it through N7 training and become a Spectre candidate just because she was pretty.  
  
Which isn't to say that she's not.  
  
Pretty.  
  
Because she is.  
  
( _Oh, god._ )  
  
Relief crashes over him in a wave when she finally stirs. But when she takes the time to assuage his guilt, it's a softer feeling that washes over him - a tingling that spreads from his chest to his extremities, flying from his fingertips in little blue sparks that he clamps down on with vehement control.  
  
He makes excuses and leaves when he's ascertained she's alright, running away like a coward on the eve of battle.  
  
He bunkers down, tells himself it's only the honor of working with the esteemed Commander Shepard, hero that she is.  
  
(But love is a storm and it gives no quarter. It's relentless.)

  
  
\---

  
  
Love builds up like clouds heavy with rain as they jump between stars.  
  
He resists it, tells himself it's a terrible idea. He's her staff lieutenant and she's his commanding officer, and there are a hundred regs telling him it's a _fucking terrible idea,_ it'll never work, and even if it could it's not allowed, so it's a moot point, really.  
  
But there's something about Shepard that just draws you in. The turian and the quarian and the asari follow her without question, and even the krogan gives her a measure of respect. And that's-- that's fucking _amazing,_ that is, because Wrex is a krogan and Shepard is, despite being Shepard, still a squishy pink water-bag of a human, and the fact that a krogan is willing to follow her orders should be enough to earn her another damn medal.  
  
And Kaidan, well, he follows her because he's a marine and she's his CO, but also because the tingling feeling he gets when she smiles at him is a drug, and his fascination with the peculiar tilt of the left side of her mouth when she grins makes him think of butterflies, and birds suddenly appearing, and, and-- shit.  
  
(He's ashamed of the way her smile drives him wild, his carefully-cultivated control slipping out of his too-tightly clenched fist.)  
  
But somewhere down the (godforsaken, no U-turns, abandon-all-hope-ye-who-enter) road he realizes that Shepard's not just his commanding officer, or his shipmate, or the object of his ill-advised infatuation.  
  
She's his friend, she _cares,_ and that, more than anything, is the last nail in the coffin.  
  
He finds himself telling her about his childhood, about Vancouver in winter, and the way the sun set over English Bay, and the smell of his parents' orchard in the fall, the trees heavy with apples.  
  
And without much meaning to, he tells her about his past, little by little, about Jump Zero and Rahna and BAaT, about the first day he lost control of his biotics, and the day he gained back enough of it to use his abilities on Jenkins.  
  
She laughs at that particular tale, full-throated and free, and he feels his heart jump at the sound.  
  
(He wants to trap that sound in a jar and keep it in his locker between his pistol and an old holo of his parents, to take it out when the migraines get bad and let her laughter wash over him like panacea.)  
  
And he finds himself asking questions, too-- about Elysium, and her childhood on Earth, and the Red they'd met at Chora's Den.  
  
He treasures the stories she tells him like jewels precious and rare: about how the colonists on Elysium lifted her up on their shoulders and paraded her through the streets; about the Reds and the dilapidated old Met Theater where they made their home; about how she lived the first half of her life with only one name, a newborn abandoned in the hospital with only a wrist tag to identify her.  
  
"So, you, what--" he asks her, smiling. "Just made up your first name? Read it off some dirty magazine--"  
  
"Oh, shut up," she says, smiling fondly. "But. No, it's--"  
  
She takes a deep breath, agitated, and it takes Kaidan by surprise when he realizes she's _upset._  
  
_Crap._  
  
"It's not a name." she tells him. "Not exactly. It-- it was somebody's pet name for me. But I needed a name when I signed up for the Alliance, so..." She shrugs.  
  
"Well," Kaidan says, striving for coolly humorous but instead falling somewhere between failingly nonchalant and desperately evasive. "At least it wasn't something terribly embarrassing like... Babes, or Honeybun, or... or _Sex Kitten--_ "  
  
She laughs, and a swell of pride rises in his chest at the sound even as mortification settles in when he realizes how completely and utterly inappropriate that was.  
  
There is also an - again, completely and utterly inappropriate - image of Shepard, a.k.a. his Fucking ( _ha!_ ) Commanding Officer in bed, wearing non-Alliance-issue lingerie, and before he's even had the chance to fully analyze and subsequently discard that thought, he's already seeing himself on the wrong side of the airlock door.  
  
But: "Sex Kitten Shepard," she says, grinning. "Council Spectre. The Council better be damn grateful they didn't have to key that into their files."  
  
"Right," he says hoarsely. "What _does_ your name mean, though?" he asks, genuinely curious, but also attempting to slowly steer this train-wreck of a conversation away from the fucking cliff he's dug himself.  
  
And at that, Shepard smiles faintly, eyes looking somewhere far, far away. "Star," she says. " _Tala_ means 'star'."  
  
She makes him turn off his translator and tells him stories and sings snatches of songs in a number of languages, some from Earth and some not; one of the perks of growing up poor without a translator handy.  
  
She shows him her Star of Terra, points out the little tear on the strap that had gotten there during a bar fight in the after-party of the awarding ceremony.  
  
She brings out an actual honest-to-goodness photo, tattered edges, faded colors and all, and points out the Reds she'd been close to - a burly boy named Hadley and a tech geek named Tink, and an older boy she'd loved and lost and wouldn't say how or why.  
  
(He looks at that boy and the way his arm curved around Shepard's waist, and he stomps down on the feelings of jealousy he knows he's not entitled to.)  
  
They trade memories, a secret barter between them, and together they make new ones, too.  
  
Some of his most vivid memories are those of her in battle: he watches her disappear before his eyes, before she uncloaks behind a crate a few meters away and fires one precise shot into an enemy's head. Or she slides into cover beside him and smilingly extends her hand toward him, omni-tool activated and ready to dispense medi-gel while ignoring the blood streaming down her cheek.  
  
Some memories he associates with the word 'loud', like that time Shepard and Ash drag him and Joker to a bar on the Citadel for drinks. He watches in morbid fascination as Shepard matches Ashley's iron gut shot for shot until she's absolutely, swimmingly drunk, giggly with alcoholic fizz tickling her insides.  
  
And it takes all those years of training his iron-willed control to rein in the heart attack forming in his chest as Shepard, completely smashed, rides on the back of Joker's wheelchair, one foot pushing off the ground and sending them careening at a crazy speed.  
  
Joker, only slightly tipsy (no sense in letting the best pilot in the Alliance get suspended for DUI), looks like he wishes his wheelchair had an ejection seat. "Commander, watch out for that--!"  
  
"Too late!"  
  
And then Kaidan has to apologize to the run-over C-Sec officer before taking off after a very uncoordinated Shepard and a half-faint Joker, dragging a hysterically laughing Ashley behind him all the way back to the Normandy.  
  
But it's the quiet memories he treasures the most: like when one day she asks to try his apple-flavored biotic energy bar, and she ends up pacing around the crew deck until two in the morning, trying to work off the energy that her non-biotic biology couldn't process. During that time, she passes by his console an infinite number of times and stops to talk to him just as much, and once she even sings him an old, old song she'd learned as a child that goes: _Don't sit under the apple tree with anyone else but me, 'till I come marching home._  
  
When she finally crashes, he slings her arm over his shoulder and slips an arm around her waist to drag her to her quarters and deposit her in her bed. She stirs a little as she flops onto the mattress, curling around her pillow before settling into a smiling sleep.  
  
(He captures this moment like a painting, _Shepard in Repose_ , and stomps down on the irrational urge to run a finger down her cheek.)  
  
The next morning she vows to never do that again, but she stocks up on the ship's supply of apple energy bars the next time they're at the Citadel, and oftentimes afterwards he sees her nursing a bottle of apple juice as she stares at the galaxy map, the rim of her drink tapping against the soft pink of her lower lip.  
  
Sometimes after a mission he hears her hum to herself over the comm, _Don't sit under the apple tree with anyone else but me,_ and absentmindedly he tells himself that one day he'll bring her to his parents' orchard.  
  
He just as quickly squashes that dream down. It's a fool's dream; she's his _CO_ and there are _regs_ and they've a _galaxy_ to save--  
  
(Oh, but how lovely she'd look with apple blossoms in her hair.)

  
  
\---

  
  
And love is an electrical charge in the air between them as they flit from Therum to Feros to Noveria.  
  
They dance around each other in a complicated waltz, toeing the line between officer and subordinate, comrade and friend, almost lovers that he thinks will always be just an almost.  
  
It's a tricky dance - this reaching out and pulling back, and again, and again - but they've got it down pat.  
  
On Virmire he watches her stand on the shore, staring down at the waves as they kiss her boots.  
  
"We lived near the port, back on Earth," she tells him, contemplating the water reach out, pull back, again, again. "We'd watch the sun set over the bay, and then we'd climb the roof of the Met and we'd go through the names of the stars, and the constellations."  
  
He doesn't know why she's telling him this, now of all times, just a little over a quarter of an hour before he's supposed to move out with the salarian strike group. He listens, anyway, treasuring these little moments when they reach out for each other before the inevitable pulling away, back to the safety of regs and command.  
  
"We," he repeats slowly. "You and the Reds?"  
  
She laughs, but it's a soft, unhappy sound. " _A_ Red," she clarifies. She takes a deep breath before she continues. "His name was Elias."  
  
He picks up on the operative word. "Was?"  
  
"He... died. When I was seventeen. I left the Reds and signed up for the Alliance not long after."  
  
Kirrahe catches his eye and signals him: Ten minutes.  
  
"How did he die?"  
  
Shepard is as disquieted as he's ever seen her, shoulders hunched as if to curl in on herself, around the pain that must be blooming in her chest.  
  
"There was an ambush on the docks," she says, whispers quick and quiet now. "Black market organ dealers. He fought them off, gave me and the younger Reds a  chance to run."  
  
"And he didn't stand a chance alone."  
  
Shepard laughs, harsh and pained. "No. No, that wasn't--" She sighs. "He fought them off. He'd been exposed to eezo as a child, but without any money for implants..."  
  
"He was a biotic?" Kaidan asks, surprised.  
  
"Yeah," she says, her voice cracking in forced lightness. "Seems I have a type."  
  
(He has, like, five minutes before storming a geth-infested base and possibly, probably dying, and his heart definitely didn't do some fucking _flip_ or whatever at the idea of being Shepard's _type_.)  
  
"But, yes," Shepard continues, drawing back his attention to the way grief tugs the corners of her mouth down. "He had underdeveloped biotics. And died for it." The unspoken _For Me_ hangs in the air as Shepard rubs a fist against her eyes, pressing down on the unformed tears as if to will them back inside. "I don't know why I'm remembering this now, or why I'm telling you this. I guess I'm just trying to say--"  
  
"Lietenant Alenko?"  
  
Time's up.  
  
"We're ready to move out," Kirrahe says, drawing closer. "See you on the other side, Commander."  
  
Shepard nods to the salarian, brisk and businesslike, but when Kirrahe turns his back she meets Kaidan's eyes and he's surprised by the fear he sees there, raw and unrestrained.  
  
He reaches out - one more time before he has to pull away again.  
  
"I'll see you back at the Normandy, Commander," he says, holding out a hand.  
  
She takes it, shakes it once, but he holds it firm when she moves to pull back. A blue glow wraps his hand, trembling light as a caress as it travels over hers. "Nothing to worry about," he reassures her, his smile probably softer than he intended it to be.  
  
"Yeah." She swallows, then smiles bravely. "Do us proud."  
  
They pull away, in sync even in parting, and wait for gravity to pull them back together again.

  
  
\---

  
  
When love finally strikes, it's lightning - the force of it almost a physical shock through his body as she storms through the AA tower doors.  
  
He dreams of Ash that night, and she grins at him without malice or blame. She's mouthing words he can't quite--  
  
_There was thunder on the deep--_  
  
_The dust of dead gods--_  
  
He wakes up gasping for air he can't get enough of.  
  
His thoughts are a wild jumble upon waking, a mess of Shepard and the mushroom cloud over Virmire and the snippets of a poem Ashley had recited to him once, juxtaposed over the image of Shepard appearing at the AA tower, gun drawn and ready to unleash a volley of fire and anger and grief.  
  
_I broke the night's primeval bars,_  
_I dared the old abysmal curse,_  
_And flashed through ranks of frightened stars_  
_Suddenly on the universe!_  
  
(He imagines her running towards the tower, panicking and desperate, and then, strangely, he imagines her, seventeen and skinny and scared, running towards the docks as a boy falls in a heap of dimming blue light.)  
  
_I'll break and forge the stars anew,_  
_Shatter the heavens with a song--_  
  
(How did that poem go again, Ash...?)  
  
_\--Because I love you--_  
  
When he quiets he feels the truth of it in his tired bones, and he closes his eyes and pictures himself finally, finally walking into the rushing storm, a new man washed clean in the fierce downpour.  
  
(He's not afraid of drowning, not anymore.)

  
  
\---

  
  
His cheek tingles with the warmth of her breath, and she's so, so close.  
  
(He wonders if she'll taste like apple juice if he kisses her.)  
  
He's about to find out when Joker pulls the worst-timed announcement in history, and duty calls her away again, out of the reach of his hands.  
  
(This sets a precedence for the rest of their lives, but he doesn't know that yet.)  
  
But she smiles that left-tilted smile and he rests easy, knowing that they're nowhere near done.

  
  
\---

  
  
They hurtle toward certain death with a kind of childlike exhilaration.  
  
The entire crew of the Normandy scuttles around the ship like restless ants, making preparations, checking ship status readings, discussing the repercussions of stealing the Alliance's most advanced warship and feeling strangely excited about it.  
  
Through it all, Shepard stands unfazed, plotting their route with Liara and Joker, discussing the engine's limits with Tali, repairing the Mako with Garrus. But in the stillness of the artificial night on the Normandy she lets Kaidan see the cracks forming, gives him the honor of sharing the burden she bears.  
  
(He cradles her trust like a butterfly in his hands - a fragile, precious thing.)  
  
The night before Ilos, he enters her cabin and offers up his heart and his loyalty, and he watches, stunned, as she smiles that maddening smile and promises to treasure both.  
  
(He didn't think it was possible to love her more than he already did. He's never been more pleased to be wrong.)  
  
In the dark, they reach out for each other, hands finding arms, then shoulders, and then fingers find buttons and zippers and finally skin.  
  
They kiss, soft as starlight and sweet as sin, and this time neither of them pull away.

  
  
\---

  
  
The moments after the Battle for the Citadel as he sits beneath rubble with Shepard nowhere in sight are some of the longest minutes in his life so far.  
  
He can't move, can't speak; this can't be over, they were on the brink of something new and wonderful and _this can't be over--_  
  
She crests over bits of ceiling and Reaper fragments like a sunrise, bright and beautiful and new, and his heart soars with possibilities and hope reborn.

  
  
\---

  
  
Shore leave is sweet, like most forbidden things.  
  
They hide out in a small apartment on the Citadel, wrapped up in sheets and each other's arms. They whisper secrets that lovers often do, and they paint a future where there are no Reapers and no gunfights and no regs to tear them apart.  
  
"Do you ever wonder," he asks her as he traces a line down the surprisingly soft skin of her shoulder, "How different things could've been?"  
  
They're tangled up in each other, sweat-slick and fever-warm after making love, and he shivers at the cool puff of air on his bare chest when she huffs a laugh.  
  
"If a geth army and a Reaper weren't enough to keep me from you, Kaidan, I don't think anything is." She smiles up at him, her cheek pressing flat against his chest. "I think I'd have found you anyway, one way or another."  
  
"Really?" he challenges, grinning at her infectious joy. "No _Shepard-the-delinquent-gang-leader_ back on Earth? Or maybe even _Shepard-the-farmer_ on some colony, like-- like Mindoir? Or, say, _Shepard-going-out-in-a-blaze-of-glory_ on, ah, I don't know, Akuze--"  
  
She laughs, high and tinkling, the sound echoing like a warning bell, heralding the earthquake that threatens to erupt inside his chest.  
  
She shifts up suddenly, straddling him, strong limbs pinning him against the mattress and sending heat crawling down his spine and pooling low in his gut.  
  
But the look in her eyes is soft; warm sunshine instead of blazing fire, and when she smiles he gets the sudden urge to do things like make her breakfast in bed and comb her hair and introduce her to his parents.  
  
(Which is weird, and stupid, and completely inappropriate--)  
  
"Nowhere I'd rather be than here, Lieutenant," she says.  
  
(--and everything he's ever wanted.)  
  
He grins, wild and unabashed, before he traps her in a biotic lift, deftly maneuvering her weightless form to press her down onto the mattress, ignoring her shriek and the light slap on his shoulder as he looms over her. He kisses her, and he can't help but think she tastes like apples and promises and the bright uncertain future that stretches out before them.  
  
(They leave their duties at the door, but it comes knocking soon enough, quiet and unobtrusive but unrelenting like the galaxy's spin.)  
  
The Normandy calls them back, and well, if the Commander asks for Lieutenant Alenko's tactical input more than usual, no one mentions it. And so off they go, sailing around the stars, and Kaidan feels light, like he's floating in his own biotic lift, eezo and happiness a constant thrum in his veins.  
  
Until one day when an unknown ship tears the Normandy apart, and Shepard floats away into the empty void, out of his reach like the mocking stars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song Shepard sings is "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree" by The Andrews Sisters, and the poem Ashley recites is "The Call" by Rupert Brooke, both of which I feel suit the tone of Kaidan and Shepard's relationship quite well.


	2. Chapter 2

There are no words for the way his heart breaks when he opens the last life pod and finds Joker huddled in a corner, his uniform singed and torn, tears and snot streaming down his face.  
  
_Alone._  
  
There is no sound: his heart breaks in silence, the fragments of it shattering soundlessly like a vid on mute, quiet and all the more painful for its simplicity.  
  
He doesn't scream, doesn't shout, doesn't even whisper her name for fear that his saying it might take all of the too-little air that's left in his lungs.  
  
(He wonders if she called for him, in the end, if the last of her oxygen was used up by the syllables of his name.)  
  
"Kaidan," Joker says. "Kaidan, I'm sorry, _I'm sorry--_ "  
  
Wordlessly Kaidan gestures for the other marines to take the pilot to the makeshift med-bay they'd set up, not looking him in the eye because all he can see is Shepard, drifting, dreaming, _dying--_  
  
There is no feeling: only the numbness as the snow whips around them, the cold seeping through the seams of his armor.  
  
(It doesn't bother him. What does it matter? There's already a block of ice in his chest that freezes him from the inside-out.)

  
  
\---

  
  
There's a memorial held for the Normandy on the Citadel. A whole bunch of Alliance brass show up, and reporters, and even some alien military groups are well-represented.  
  
Through it all, Kaidan's thought process is, summarily: She's dead.  
  
She's dead and he just feels... empty, like the infinite blackness of space, the vast nothingness over Alchera.  
  
(There aren't enough tears in the galaxy for this kind of grief.)  
  
Joker hates himself enough for both of them, but if ever there was a gracious part of Kaidan's heart (or any part of his heart left at all) he's left it behind on the Normandy.  
  
He tells himself Shepard would've forgiven them both for leaving.  
  
(Here's to hoping she has forgiveness enough for two.)  
  
All the caskets are empty, of course, but she's left a Shepard-shaped hole in the galaxy, in the Spectres, in that distant, dreamy future they'd carved out for themselves.  
  
(His chest is hollow where she used to reside, warm and beating and alive.)  
  
He meets up for drinks with the squad after the memorial service and watches each of them honor her in their own way: Wrex dedicates a traditional krogan burial 'chant', which consisted of more table-banging, foot-stomping, and fist-pounding than actual chanting. Garrus shows them Shepard's name engraved onto the small armor piece over his trigger finger - a tiny, evenly lettered thing - and tells them it's the highest honor a turian can give to a lost friend.  
  
"So they're with you in every shot," he says.  
  
Liara tries to describe Shepard's mind to them, the vastness of it, how you can stand in its dead calm center and watch everything spin around you like a million bright planets in orbit. Tali recites an old quarian poem for the dead:  
  
"The dark between stars is a vast, empty thing,  
The abyss between lives is greater still.  
Let these stones be your anchor,  
These skies be your harbor.  
May the ancestors guide you home."  
  
When they ask him how humans - or specifically, how he honors the dead, he almost chokes on his drink.  
  
"Well, I guess--" and they're all looking at him intently and he's trying to breathe through the lump lodged in his throat, and he can't, _he can't--_ "You just. Remember. That's all you can do."  
  
(He doesn't tell them that forgetting is a thousand times more difficult.)

  
  
\---

  
  
He's given a month of shore leave.  
  
_On Elysium._  
  
(The cruelty of this joke is definitely in keeping with the pattern of his life so far.)  
  
He watches the colonists leave flowers at the foot of the Blitz monument, listens to every fervent prayer for the repose of her soul. On his third night there he finds himself seated the next table over from a group of marines toasting Shepard, and quietly listens to their tales of how she held a crucial choke-point almost single-handedly, giving them ample time to evacuate the colonists.  
  
He must have not been very subtle, because one of the marines calls him over to their table.  
  
"You toasting Shep too?" she asks as the others scoot to make room for him.  
  
Kaidan shrugs. "Yeah. Sure."  
  
The marine looks him over, her eyes sharp in the dim light. "You ever worked with her?"  
  
Kaidan's throat feels dry; he swallows, tries to speak. He takes a swig to wet his lips before he replies. "Yeah."  
  
"Where?"  
  
A whisper, soft - his voice fragile like a dream you don't want to wake up from. "The Normandy."  
  
"Well, shit," the marine says, and then suddenly they're toasting him, too, and it's too much, _too much;_ his failure presses down on him and he has to excuse himself.  
  
He escapes into the cool night air, away from the bright lights and loud music of the club. It's so easy to imagine her here, young and smiling, ready to enjoy shore leave before letting herself be pulled back into action without a complaint.  
  
(He can almost see the ghost of her in the purple-tinted Elysium evening: young and focused, rifle at the ready, turning to him as if he was a colonist and saying... and saying--)  
  
( _\--Kaidan, go. Now!_ )  
  
He'll forever deny throwing up into the bushes outside the club, will never tell anyone about the tears mingling with the puddle of vomit at his feet, will never admit to how memory and regret and failure tasted bile-bitter and burned like fire down his throat.

  
  
\---

  
  
In the aftermath, he goes through the motions of daily life, an empty husk in a caricature of a meaningful existence.  
  
(He doesn't know what it means to live anymore.)  
  
He doesn't know what colors are anymore. He remembers watching an old, old film with his father when he was a boy, remembers thinking how sad it must have been to live in a world painted in shades of gray.  
  
The truth of it is a harshness he wouldn't wish on anyone.  
  
It's Anderson who bullies him out of it - Anderson who was always the only father Shepard had ever known, who gave her what she needed if not always what she wanted, who was strangely protective of Shepard in his own quiet way.  
  
He thinks, bitterly, that Anderson would never have let Shepard go back alone, would never have let her not get onto the life pod, would never have left her behind. His failure cripples him enough that he ought to be legally given honorable discharge from the Alliance. But Anderson pushes and prods and tells him that Shepard wouldn't have wanted this.  
  
He thinks, _Shepard wouldn't have wanted to die, either, but look where they are._  
  
He bites his tongue, his body more easily settling into the habits of obedience than his mind or his heart does.  
  
He gets posted on a new ship, the Sarajevo. It's smaller than the Normandy, and doesn't see as much action, mainly keeping well within Alliance space except for occasional jumps to the Citadel.  
  
He tells himself it's fine. That he never wanted the danger of facing possible death each time he went ashore. That he doesn't miss the excitement of flitting from star to star on some wild manhunt. That he absolutely doesn't mentally question every decision his commanding officer makes because that isn't how _she_ would've done it.  
  
He's fine.  
  
_Really._  
  
(But he's not the least bit surprised when he's given an order of transfer. Reason given: disruption of peace and order in the barracks.)  
  
So the nightmares are bad. That doesn't mean--  
  
(His posting on a planetside R &D facility doesn't go much better.)  
  
Alright, so maybe he misses the action--  
  
(It's just the action. Definitely--)  
  
Anderson sees right through him.  
  
And Anderson is a good leader (of course he is, because even _she_ had looked up to him), and a good motivator, so instead of cornering Kaidan like the numerous psychiatrists had tried to do, he simply says, "I miss her, too."  
  
(And, oh, god, _he's not okay._ )  
  
Kaidan takes a week off, and he spends that week in an apartment on the Citadel--  
  
(A smile. _Nowhere I'd rather be than here--_ )  
  
\--where he drinks and weeps and sleeps; rinse, repeat.  
  
He dreams in black and white - of apple trees, and the softness of her lips as she tapped a bottle restlessly against them, of another old poem Ashley had tried to get him to appreciate:  
  
_I am stretched on your grave_  
_And will lie there forever_  
_If your hands were in mine_  
_Then I know we'd not sever._  
  
("This is a really depressing poem," he'd told her. Ashley had playfully batted his arm with the rifle part she'd been cleaning and said, "It's a beautiful pain, my _god_ , LT.")  
  
_My apple tree, my brightness,_  
_'Tis time we were together,_  
_For I smell of the earth_  
_And am worn by the weather._  
  
(And oh, but how lovely she would have looked, a crown of apple blossoms braided into her hair.)  
  
There is nothing beautiful about the way he startles awake, grateful for the darkness as his hand claws over his chest where his heart used to be, his tears a relentless, rushing rain streaming down the landscape of his face.  
  
( _Love is rain, is a storm, is a lightning strike as she strode through the doors--_ )  
  
On the last day of his leave he doesn't touch the bottle, merely lies in bed staring upwards, watching the light entering from the slit in the curtains crawl across the ceiling.  
  
When the light has long shifted to the blue tint of the night cycle, he whispers, once, "I miss you," before he falls into an exhausted, dreamless sleep.  
  
He reports back to Anderson the next day, tired but presentable, and finally accepts the offer to teach the biotics division.  
  
Anderson gives him assignments, missions, diversions to keep him pushing forward. Anderson cares about Kaidan too, he thinks, but the older soldier is also doing this for Shepard. It seems this wayward father can't let any part of her be left less than the best it could be, and with her body spaced and her ship destroyed and her findings on the Reapers stonewalled by the council, Kaidan's the only part of her worth putting any effort into anymore.  
  
(He thinks he should feel guilty; Anderson obviously knows what they've done, but feeling anything takes a lot of effort these days.)  
  
And Kaidan thinks that he can't do it for himself, but maybe, _maybe,_ he can do this for Shepard, too.  
  
(Because he doesn't regret what they've done, not one bit.)  
  
He doesn't think he can ever be normal again - a military man with a purpose and distant dreams of settling down with a smiling wife. But he can be the man that Shepard deserved. And when he crosses that final threshold she'll greet him with that maddening quirk of the left side of her mouth and her kiss will feel like raindrops on his cheek, the final absolution he never got in this life.  
  
(It's a far more distant dream of a happy ending than he planned, but he doesn't think he can settle for anything less.)

  
  
\---

  
  
Time doesn't heal, not quite, but it numbs the pain to a low hum, like a migraine on the fringes of his consciousness.  
  
There are bad days, still, but there are days when he doesn't want to keel over for want of her smile, and he thinks he's okay. He's gotten a promotion. Sometimes he even responds to his mom's emails. He's getting better.  
  
(It's a lie. When Anderson tells him about the rumors he breaks down in the Councilor's office, begging the older man to just let her _rest._ )  
  
Anderson orders him home, his eyes full of pity.  
  
"You ever tried telling that to yourself, Alenko?" Anderson asks, and then Kaidan has to leave before the coming migraine renders him incapable of getting back to his apartment unaided.  
  
In the next few days he throws himself into his work, his hobbies, anything he can think of to keep his mind off her. His friends set him up on a date with a pretty doctor that he hastily accepts and ends just as quickly, with profuse apologies from his side after his date has to talk him through a panic attack triggered by Shepard's voice on a tinny store ad.  
  
(When he lays in bed that night he hears her voice singing: _Don't sit under the apple tree with anyone else but me, 'till I come marching home._ )  
  
He's spent two years trying to move on.  
  
(The prospect of not having to hurts more than grieving did.)  
  
Two days later, after sobering up, he returns to Anderson to tell him he's ready to ship out.

  
  
\---

  
  
Horizon is a nightmare, even before her ghost shows up to haunt him.  
  
After enduring weeks of restless suspicion from the colonists, Kaidan's about ready to burst. When the Collector ship arrives he tries to will himself to wake up, because that's the ship that destroyed the Normandy ( _that's the ship that killed Shepard_ ) and this must be a terrible, terrible dream--  
  
He's frozen, suspended in time, and all around him there are the silent screams of colonists being taken, sinister shadows dragging them away. It all culminates in the shadow of the defense tower, tears in both their eyes and two years of lost time and too many secrets between them.  
  
(This isn't real, this is a dream; two years of mourning and he's sure she's dead dead _dead._ )  
  
Oh, but she looks the same, sounds the same, _smells_ the same - like gun polish and the eezo smell that permeates all starships.  
  
(He wonders, in the half-second before she pulls away from his embrace, if she'll taste the same if he kisses her.)  
  
But this isn't her, it can't be, because this woman is alive and with Cerberus and Shepard is dead dead _dead._  
  
(Out of his reach like stars mocking in their twinkling spheres.)  
  
He wills his traitor heart to harden against this--  
  
( _\--illusion, dream, an impossible wish come true--_ )  
  
\-- _whatever_ this is.  
  
His mind reels with the jumble of thoughts that clamor for his attention and threaten to spill out of his ears: Shepard is alive Shepard is a traitor Shepard is here Shepard faked her own death Shepard loved you Shepard lied to you this is a dream this is a nightmare _this is a second chance--!_  
  
And it's too much, _too much;_ Shepard is here and he's here and he doesn't know what that's supposed to _mean._  
  
(Oh, but Shepard was never a very good liar, and the mingled fear and hope and desperation clear on her face doesn't look like it could be faked--)  
  
No.  
  
(But what reason would she have to--)  
  
_No._  
  
If she had really died and come back to life, she would've looked for him.  
  
(Wouldn't she?)  
  
He walks away.  
  
(A coward on the eve of battle; afraid of drowning in the storm.)  
  
Love gives no quarter.  
  
(But betrayal is a quicker shot.)

  
  
\---

  
  
He gives his report to Anderson mechanically - practiced and monotone.  
  
Anderson stares at him over his clasped fingers as the silence stretches out, tense and heavy like the hush before an execution.  
  
( _Or the pin-drop silence of a heart breaking, like a vid on mute--_ )  
  
"And you're sure this is her?" Anderson asks, voice troubled, almost as if he already knows the answer but doesn't want to hear it anyway. "Shepard, no doubt about it?"  
  
There's a frightened hope somewhere there, mirroring Kaidan's own.  
  
"I--" Kaidan begins. "I don't know, sir," he answers honestly.  
  
"Alenko, son--"  
  
(A wayward father and the prodigal daughter he can't be sure is really his.)  
  
"You knew her better than anyone," Anderson continues, somehow managing not to sound accusing. "Do you think it's her?"  
  
And Kaidan sounds nothing like the soldier he is and everything like the frightened young boy he used to be when he says: "I don't _know."_  
  
Anderson softens, their shared pain and loss meeting in the air between them. "Kaidan."  
  
_"Yes,"_ Kaidan finally says. "But I don't know how it _could_ be her." He heaves a shuddering sigh. "Or if I even want it to be."  
  
Anderson's looking at him, almost assessing, but assessing what he doesn't know.  
  
"What did you say to her?" the older man asks softly.  
  
Well, _that's_ not a question he was expecting. Kaidan feels, inexplicably, like a child waiting for a scolding.  
  
It's not like he's done anything _wrong._  
  
Right?  
  
Kaidan tells him.  
  
Anderson buries his head in his hands. "Oh, _Alenko,"_ he sighs, sad and angry and resigned all at once.  
  
"I didn't _know,"_ Kaidan says, going on the defensive. "How was I supposed to _know_ if--"  
  
"You weren't," Anderson says tiredly. "You're right. The information was kept from you - from both of you - and of course it didn't turn out well. But Kaidan--" and Kaidan braces himself now because Anderson only ever calls him by his first name when it's serious _and_ it's about her. "Regardless of her motivations, she didn't deserve to be hurt that way."  
  
(And it's always about her in the end, isn't it?)  
  
"Neither did I," he whispers, impetuous and broken and _done._  
  
"No one does," Anderson says, looking down at his desk. Finally, after what seems like forever, Anderson nods. "Dismissed. Get some rest, Alenko."  
  
Kaidan runs all the way home, the too-quick beating of his heart an unfamiliar sensation in his chest, as if he's forgotten what it was like to be alive.

  
  
\---

  
  
He writes her a letter - a selfish thing.  
  
Why should she listen to what he has to say when he didn't offer her the same chance?  
  
But there's two years of words unsaid on his part, and he mourned her and he misses her and, and--  
  
(He doesn't say he loves her still, even now, even after everything.)  
  
He tells her he's sorry for what he said.  
  
(He doesn't tell her how his every cutting word was a knife in his own lungs.)  
  
He tells her he felt betrayed and hurt.  
  
(He doesn't tell her that walking away felt like treason - to her, to what they were, to his own traitor heart that screamed at him to just _hold her._ )  
  
He tells her to be careful.  
  
(He doesn't tell her _you need to take care of yourself_ and _come back to me_ and _for god's sake don't die on me again, please--_ )  
  
He tells her: _maybe._  
  
(He doesn't tell her: _always,_ and, _nowhere else I'd rather be._ )  
  
He doesn't get a reply.  
  
(He hadn't expected one.)  
  
She's got better things to do, other places to be, different people to smile at and talk to and, and--  
  
_\--trust._  
  
(He's hurt, anyway - the pain a searing shock after all this time feeling numb.)

  
  
\---

  
  
Another colony gone, another trail gone cold.  
  
The Alliance is scrambling, tightening defenses, ordering searches, and all the while their once-favorite poster girl is swooping across the galaxy one step ahead of them in the fastest starship a human terrorist organization can buy.  
  
(He feels a strangely guilty sort of pride, like he's lost the right to be proud of her but he just can't help it.)  
  
And while Shepard follows the Collectors' trail, she leaves her own - little marks that show she'd been there: a long-lost ship on Aeia reporting back, an illegal Blue Suns weapons operation stopped, and all around the Citadel shops suddenly spout the same damn line about being her favorite store.  
  
(It's a lie - she'd told him once that her favorite store on the Citadel was a tiny human-owned pastry shop that sold cheap macarons. When he visits it again it spouts a similar ad as the rest of the stores, but he knows this one is real because she'd said the first name that she never, ever uses.)  
  
And when one day reports come in about a ship that went into the Omega-4 relay and came back, he can't deny it anymore; Shepard's back from the dead and she's back in the business of doing impossible things.  
  
(His heart starts beating again to the tune of Shepard's name, and he realizes that she's not the only one back from the dead.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The poem Ashley recites is "I Am Stretched on Your Grave," which is an English translation of an old Irish poem called "Táim sínte ar do thuama."


	3. Chapter 3

Three hundred thousand batarians are dead and Shepard is in an Alliance holding cell just a few floors beneath him.  
  
(How did they get here?)  
  
He wants to see her.  
  
(It's not true, not quite; he's terrified of what he might find.)  
  
He shoots her a quick message about maybe being able to see her. He's pretty sure Alliance brass won't allow it, but he can probably just pull rank if any grunts ask him on the way. But it's all hypothetical anyway, seeing as she doesn't reply, either because she can't or won't.  
  
She probably doesn't want to see him, anyway.  
  
(Oh, but does _he_ want to see _her._ )  
  
He makes it as far as her door one day, but turns back at the greeting of the too-friendly marine guarding her quarters. He wonders if Lieutenant Vega is naturally happy-go-lucky, or if maybe Shepard's got to him too in that particular way she manages to worm under everyone's skin.  
  
(He gives Vega a month, tops, before the young marine is completely taken in.)  
  
When he does get to see her, it's barely more than a hello-how-are-you as they pass by each other in the hallway, and he hasn't even said two sentences to her before Anderson ushers her away to stand trial.  
  
(How did they _get_ here?)  
  
But then, of course, moments later the more important question is: How did the _Reapers_ get here?  
  
He's scrambling for his armor, his weapon, rushes out the door with pistol drawn and biotics at the ready, and what he sees roots him in his spot for one long moment. Reapers are descending on Vancouver like some cheap old-school movie, but this is real and his home is burning and, and--  
  
And he doesn't know _where Shepard is_ and that drives him craziest of all.  
  
He crashes into the cheerful lieutenant he'd seen following Shepard around like a puppy, except he's looking less than cheerful as he repels a wave of husks. Together they fight them off and manage to scramble towards the Normandy.  
  
When his comm crackles to life with Shepard on the other end, an inexplicable relief washes over him, strong enough to give him that last push that gets him leaping from the burning rubble of his home city and into the Normandy. His boots thudding on the metal floor are an auspicious sound, and suddenly he feels more stable on the swaying deck of a ship - this ship ( _her ship_ ) - than he does on solid ground.  
  
And later, when Shepard makes her own leap aboard the Normandy, his hand shoots out for hers on impulse, their fingers meeting in the half-moment when she's weightless in the air at the apex of her jump. Fingertips, then palms, then he grasps her hand tight, the shape of it a familiar imprint in his grip, and he pulls her forward and down until she's back on her feet, tethering her like  he's afraid she'll float away.  
  
( _Out of his reach like the mocking stars._ )  
  
If he grasps her hand a little longer than is strictly necessary, neither of them comment on it.

  
  
\---

  
  
Mars is like, fucking _Horizon: The Sequel,_ and he doesn't know how to stop.  
  
James tries to convince him, and then Liara, and then Shepard finally gets tired and gives up, calling him stubborn with a hint of affection in her voice.  
  
He's so tired of doubting her.  
  
(But trust is a miserly wretch when scorned.)  
  
He knows she's watching him, but he can't even  _look_ at her without second-guessing and he hates himself for it. He knows - _recognizes_ \- every move she makes with familiar intimacy: the way her fingers curl around the barrel of her gun after reloading, the way her shoulders tense before leaping out of cover, the way she lets out a small exhale before tapping away at a console.  
  
And he knows, he _knows_ that neither James nor Liara have the knowledge of her that he does, but somehow they have none of the reservations he does and all of the trust he doesn't.  
  
(But neither of them were hurt the way he was - his heart ripped out of his chest and lost to the endless black of space.)  
  
And he finds out, in the end, that neither James nor Liara love her the way he does; and there's simply no other way to describe the hardwired impulse to _protect_ \- to jump between her and anything that would harm her.  
  
A repetitive banging sound is coming from behind his head. Or is it _in_ his head? He's not certain; the blooming pain blurs the line where he ends and the rest of the world begins. He feels a little like a glass of water thrown into the ocean.  
  
He's surprised when he hears Shepard scream his name over the din. It makes him laugh a little - or perhaps that's just him coughing up something metallic and unpleasant - as he realizes he's too attuned to the sound of her voice, even after all this time, even after everything.  
  
In the half-second before he blacks out, he looks past the Cerberus mech toward Shepard's running silhouette, and he prays that this final act will be enough to earn her forgiveness.

  
  
\---

  
  
Kaidan wakes to a dull, muted pain at the base of his skull.  
  
An incessant beeping sound comes from his left, along with warmth and a bright light. He opens his eyes to a view of an idyllic city and an empty white room.  
  
(He must be dead.)  
  
Shepard isn't here.  
  
(He's not sure if that means this is heaven or hell.)  
  
A few moments later, the pain begins, spreading from a point at the back of his skull, and he takes that to mean that this must be hell.  
  
The doctors disabuse him of that notion, swarming into his room and adjusting wires and knobs, and soon he drifts back into pleasant numbness. He wakes an indeterminate amount of time later, to the dimness of what he finally recognizes as the Citadel's night cycle, the gray quality of it informing him that it must be early dawn. Everything hurts, still, but it's a dull, heavy pain instead of the sharp, fiery pain of before. He lies there in the dark, watching the Citadel slowly come to life as day breaks.  
  
He wonders, as always, what Shepard is doing right now. Chances are she's off saving the galaxy, and that thought makes him smile in the privacy of his room.  
  
(He remembers the way she moved on Mars, the way she fought, determination a spark in her bright eyes and it occurs to him, then, that perhaps she hasn't changed as much as he'd believed.)  
  
But that fragile half-formed conviction wavers when he sees the news vids of her on Palaven: she's more tired than he's ever seen her, her shoulders drooping with the weight of the galaxy and a hunted look in her eyes.  
  
And then there's the way she leans on Garrus for support, and the way the turian grips her upper arm, steady and calm and constant.  
  
(All the things he wasn't.)  
  
Shame is a bitter taste in his mouth and a heavy stone in the pit of his stomach.  
  
And _this_ is shameful: he asks her to come, unspoken desperation in the spaces between the words of his message.  
  
Shameful. She hasn't got the time, and he hasn't got the _right--_  
  
(But there was something in the way she'd screamed his name on Mars - a catch in her voice, an uncharacteristic panic that makes him think: maybe.)  
  
Maybe what?  
  
(He doesn't know. Just... _maybe._ )  
  
It still surprises him when she visits (even though he'd asked her to, even though he all but _begged_ ); he hadn't thought she'd read his email, let alone actually come. But she's brought a bottle of whiskey with her, and her smile is as easy as he remembers, a fond twist on the left side of her mouth as she takes in the sight of him.  
  
They talk, and somehow, the words come easily - like he's not lying battered and bruised and half-dead on a hospital bed, like the galaxy isn't looking to her to save them all, like it's just the two of them again, in the early hours aboard an empty ship, softly conversing outside her quarters.  
  
At least until Horizon comes up, and its twin sensation of shame rises in his throat, curling around his words and making him choke on them.  
  
(Oh, but she looks so _hopeful_ when she asks if they'll get past it, and god knows he wants that more than-- more than _anything,_ really, so it's not that big of a stretch to take her hand and admit, quietly, into the hairsbreadth of space between them, that it's worth a shot.)  
  
She smiles, then - a bright, glorious thing, and the squeeze of her fingers is a feeling like birds in his chest, excitement and chaotic nervousness all at once.  
  
And then, suddenly, he remembers: "Was there anything between you and Garrus?"  
  
She looks at him, once, her head tilted to the side. When she takes her hand from his, everything comes to a screeching halt. But Shepard only covers her face as she bursts into peals of laughter, shoulders shaking in mirth as she tries to calm herself down and fails.  
  
"Oh, oh _god,_ " she says, in between breathless giggles. "You think Garrus and I had a-- a what, _a fling?"_  
  
Well of course it sounds stupid when she puts it like _that._ His face feels like it's on fire and he wonders if he can't fiddle with his anesthetic because he wants to just pass out _right now._  
  
But Shepard leans on his bed, resting her head on her arms and smiling up at him, bright-eyed with amusement and something like fond exasperation. "We've gotten closer, yes," she says. "But not in the way you think. He had my back when I was working with Cerberus," and isn't _that_ a guilty stab of pain in his gut, but she continues: "He's my best friend."  
  
Kaidan cocks his head. "There's a 'but' somewhere there," he says, not a little hopeful.  
  
Shepard smiles. "But that's all. He's a very dear friend - almost a brother - and that's all there is to it."  
  
Kaidan forces out all the breath he'd been holding, and it comes out somewhere between a sigh and a laugh. "Oh," he says, and he doesn't quite know how to respond so he settles for: "Well, alright."  
  
Shepard smiles up at him, sunlight catching in her eyes and burnishing the lock of hair that falls delicately against her cheek. "Can I tell you a secret?" she asks, whispering conspiratorially.  
  
He can't help the quirk of his mouth; her joy is too infectious and _god,_ this woman will be the death of him, so he just nods, waiting.  
  
Shepard winks. "Garrus has a _massive_ crush on Tali."  
  
All the unspoken words in his throat burst out in peals of laughter, dancing around the hospital room, floating like dust motes in the bright Citadel daylight. 

  
  
\---

  
  
He's getting better.  
  
PT's going well; he's even made friends with a mild-mannered drell in the same time slot as him, making small conversation as they go through the practiced motions.  
  
"Nuara," he greets the drell as he enters the room.  
  
His new friend smiles, his eyebrow ridges rising in an effort to make his expression friendlier. "Major Alenko," he nods back. "I trust you're feeling well?"  
  
And he is, honestly. He's itching to get out of here, off the Citadel and into the fight. Nuara nods in understanding.  
  
"You'll be stationed on an Alliance ship, I expect?" the drell asks, huffing as he goes through his regimen.  
  
"Maybe," Kaidan answers, entertaining the notion, a smile curling his mouth.  
  
"Back to the... Normandy, was it?" The drell smiles, something like a secret dancing in his wide black eyes. "Under the famous Commander Shepard?"  
  
Kaidan huffs a laugh, trying not to blush and failing. He hopes the drell will pass it off as exertion. "I don't know. Maybe. I'll have my own Spectre duties to think of, too, so..." He shrugs. "We'll see."  
  
They go through PT in comfortable silence until Nuara asks: "Do you know her very well? Commander Shepard."  
  
_(You knew the Commander?)_  
  
_(I used to.)_  
  
Kaidan looks at the drell huffing beside him, considers the question before answering, with a strange hint of shame, "Something like that."  
  
"She must be quite a character," Nuara remarks, amusement in his tone.  
  
_"Like you wouldn't believe,"_ bursts out of Kaidan's mouth with a half-laugh, half-sigh, and he has to run his hand through his hair in a pathetic attempt to hide his embarrassment.  
  
"I am prepared to believe a great number of fantastical things, Major Alenko," he says. "The galaxy seems a strange enough place these days that anything's possible."  
  
It all comes out in a rush: "Even someone dying and coming back and saving the galaxy?" He doesn't know why he's telling this to Nuara, who probably wouldn't understand at best and would think he was completely unhinged at worst. But maybe he just really needs to get this off his chest, so he goes on: "Even loving someone, losing them, finding them, feeling betrayed by them, and then loving them anyway?" Kaidan shakes his head. "I don't know, but that's pretty damn crazy, even in a galaxy full of Reapers."  
  
The drell simply purses his lips, a strange expression on his face, almost as if he was trying not to smile.  
  
"Perhaps even that," he says. "Things do not simply stop making sense just because we do not have enough sense to understand them."  
  
Kaidan laughs. "That didn't make _any_ sense."  
  
Nuara smiles. "To _you,"_ he says. "I think," the drell continues, as he wraps up his PT session, "That the universe has a logic we cannot comprehend. And your beloved has reasons you do not understand." He makes his way toward the door. "That does not make them any less right."  
  
And then he's gone, leaving Kaidan standing quiet and alone in the late afternoon light, his thoughts a jumble of puzzle pieces he can't yet make sense of.

  
  
\---

  
  
Shepard visits him once more just before he's released.  
  
She holds herself distant, and she feels distant, too - there's a hollow look in her eyes that pulls her away from him, away from this brightly-lit hospital room, and pulls her toward somewhere dark and dangerous that he isn't sure he can follow.  
  
And in any case, he can't follow her, not onto the Normandy, not now. He tells her as much.  
  
And that grounds her a little bit, her gaze focusing on him and piercing through him in that uncanny way Shepard has of looking at people, as if she's wondering whether to shoot them or save them.  
  
She sighs, shrugs, a sad smile tweaking her mouth.  
  
A last congratulations, a last goodbye, and then she's out the door, and not for the first time Kaidan wonders if this time he's pushed her away for good.

  
  
\---

  
  
Kaidan hears news _of_ her - from her exploits on Sur'Kesh and Eden Prime to the various Alliance bases she's secured - but he never hears news _from_ her - if she's alright, if Joker is still an ass, if Dr. Chakwas is still as scary if (when) Shepard goes overboard groundside. If Liara still bounces at the mere mention of Protheans, not to mention a real, live Prothean on the Normandy. If Garrus still counts out his leftover ammo after a mission, crowing at how little he'd used up.  
  
She probably hasn't got the time, of course, and even if she did there's no guarantee she'd keep him in the loop. But he supposes one can hope, especially when the galaxy's crashing down around their ears.  
  
What he does get, however, are periodic updates from someone called Samantha Traynor, apparently an Alliance comm specialist, who sends him bits of news about Grissom Academy students, or some new biotic amp in development, or a tidbit about a group of biotics holed up somewhere in North America - all her emails prefaced with _'Commander Shepard asked to tell you...'_ or _'Commander Shepard wanted this forwarded to you...'_  
  
It's something, at least.  
  
In any case, she's still alive and kicking, if nothing else, and she's somewhere in the same galaxy as he is, and that little thought gets him through days filled with Spectre reports and nights filled with investigations into his old biotics division, until finally he falls into a fitful sleep filled with dreams of _after_  or _maybe._  
  
He's a cautious dreamer, now. Once, he had allowed himself to hope for a life with her, a home, somewhere to rest their heads after all the fighting was done, and he found himself crushed when she'd died and all those dreams died with her. Now, he's a bit less idealistic; he knows that even _maybe_ is a stretch, and as Reapers descend on the galaxy it begins to feel like the only rest they'll get is eternal rest as ashes and stardust.  
  
Hope is a scarce commodity in a galaxy on the brink of destruction, and what little he has is zipping across lightyears in a tiny ship, worryingly silent as she rushes to save them all.

  
  
\---

  
  
He's visiting Nuara at Huerta Memorial when the first explosion hits.  
  
Kaidan looks across at the drell, knocked out of his chair from the force of the blast. He's already calculating even as he ascertains his friend's alright: north-west, near C-Sec HQ, about twenty minutes away on foot...  
  
"What's going on?" Nuara asks, anxiety a rough edge in his voice.  
  
"I don't--" Kaidan begins, before his omni-tool barks to life and Commander Bailey is telling him that _Cerberus_ is on the _station_ and he needs to get to the Council _right fucking now._  
  
"I need to go," he tells Nuara. "You should evacuate, head where it's safe--"  
  
The drell shakes his head. "You have your duty, I have mine. I will try to get help. Kalahira watch over you, Major Alenko."  
  
And then the drell is running, faster than Kaidan would've thought for someone terminally ill, and then he rounds the corner and he's gone.  
  
Kaidan shakes his head as he starts off on his own way, and tries not to think so hard about the dread pooling in his stomach.

  
  
\---

  
  
He's staring down the barrel of a gun at the last person he ever wanted to see on the wrong end of his pistol.  
  
_(How did they get here?)_  
  
The Council is behind him, and Shepard's squad is in front of him, and the only thing between Shepard's bullet and Udina's head is humanity's second Spectre.  
  
(This feels, strangely, like the first Normandy again, duty and want a raging tug-of-war in his chest.)  
  
He _ought_ to protect the Council. He _wants_ to trust Shepard.  
  
Udina is screaming things like _Cerberus_ and _traitor,_ flinging sharp words at Shepard as if to see whether she'll crack under their weight.  
  
(He's tired tired _tired_ of doubting her.)  
  
He looks across at her, questioning, pleading, _why are you doing this_ and _please, god, don't let this be true._  
  
And then Shepard does something he's only ever seen her do once before, while facing down a batarian slaver on an asteroid barreling toward a planet of millions: she lowers her gun.  
  
(He'd asked her about it after, why she'd let Balak go. She'd said: "Do you think those hostages' families wanted them avenged, or alive?")  
  
(He'd smiled at that, the urge to kiss her a near-uncontrollable thing in his chest.)  
  
At a gesture, Garrus and Liara lower their weapons too, implicitly trusting Shepard not to get them killed in the face of an armed and dangerous biotic Spectre. And sure, Garrus keeps a finger on the trigger, and he feels Liara's biotics pulsing under her skin, primed and ready, but he sees, too, the way they look at Shepard, like she'll never lead them astray - conviction brightening their eyes and straightening their shoulders, ready for anything.  
  
_(Things do not simply stop making sense just because we do not have enough sense to understand them.)_  
  
He meets her eyes, almost as familiar to him as his own, and sees them wide and round with desperation and a little something like fear.  
  
They say, _please trust me._  
  
_There's more to this than you think._  
  
_Please, please, please, for the love of god, don't make me kill you._  
  
And Kaidan says, his voice a little ragged: "I better not regret this."  
  
"You won't," is a whisper, a sigh - a sound like sleepless nights and unshed tears and the weight of a gun in a lover's shaking hand.  
  
Kaidan lowers his gun, turns it sidewards and away. "Udina," he says. "Step away from the console."

  
  
\---

  
  
Kaidan stands off to the side as Shepard, Garrus, Chakwas, and Joker huddle around the Normandy memorial wall. He watches silently as Shepard places a new plaque on the wall, watches her linger as the others disperse, her finger tracing the block letters engraved on the metal.  
  
"Is that his real name?" he asks, quietly approaching her. He watches the left corner of her mouth tilt up in a forced smile - a sad, broken thing.  
  
"I believe so," she says.  
  
_(I am prepared to believe a great number of fantastical things.)_  
  
Kaidan finds himself smiling a little at the memory. "I'm sorry about... Thane," he says, the name an unfamiliar syllable in his mouth. "I wish I could've known him longer."  
  
A sigh. "Me too."  
  
He shuffles in his spot uncomfortably, before he says: "And I'm sorry about... me."  
  
Shepard turns to him, a glimmer of curiosity driving away the increasingly familiar hollow look in her eyes that he's learning to hate. "You?"  
  
"I know I've said this before," he says. "When I asked to join you. But I need to say it again. I'm sorry I doubted you."  
  
She smiles, a modicum of warmth lighting up her face. "You did what you had to do. What you thought you should do. If you had shot me, it would have only been because you thought it was the right thing to do."  
  
"I'd have been wrong," he insists, before adding: "And dead."  
  
"I wouldn't have shot you," she says in a broken whisper, all the weight of the dead pressing down her throat and wrapping around her like a shroud. And shit, he hadn't meant to make her miserable like this, but apparently he's a pro.  
  
"Garrus probably would have," he says, trying for a joke. "Or Liara. She seems like the crazy protective girlfriend type." And she's smiling, a little bit, and _thank god_ this is working because making her smile is _way_ harder than he remembers it being. "Or hell, Joker looked like he was ready to shoot me the second I stepped onboard. Repeatedly. With a canon."  
  
She laughs, a little despairingly, perhaps, but genuinely nonetheless. "He'd break both arms just trying to fire a pistol."  
  
"Yeah, well, he'd probably just get EDI to do it, or something."  
  
She smiles then, for real - the left corner of her mouth a mischievous quirk as a familiar fire lights up her eyes. "Well, if they give you any trouble, let me know. I'll take care of it," she says, in the tone that means some form of Shepard-brand violence will be involved.  
  
And this - this small promise that is so distinctly _Shepard_ \- makes his heart hammer against his ribs, and his chest feels too full, and he smiles softly as he chokes out a whisper: _"There_ you are."  
  
He hears a soft gasp, a shuddering intake of breath, and when his eyes meet hers he thinks he's never seen her so vulnerable - cracked open bleeding raw, all her doubts and insecurities pinned under a microscope.  
  
(And it's then, under the fluorescent Normandy lights, with the names of the dead looming high and severe in the background, that Kaidan realizes he's not the only one who doubted her.)  
  
(And it isn't the Reapers that are Shepard's worst enemy, or the Collectors or the geth or even Cerberus. It's herself.)  
  
Sometimes he looks at Shepard and all he sees is the two years stolen from them by a galaxy that seems determined to collapse on itself. He wonders if that's what she sees, too; does she look in the mirror and count every absent white hair, every unformed wrinkle, and does she look at her tired reflection and imagine herself with the smile lines of a woman happy and loved?  
  
There's a good chance he'll get killed throwing himself against the Reapers, but if there's one war he'll fight to win, it's this: Shepard's losing battle against the ghosts that haunt her head.  
  
Briefly, he brushes his fingers against hers as he whispers, fervent: "Never. Again."  
  
She takes a steadying breath, as if she's preparing herself for heartbreak. "I didn't recruit you for your unwavering faith, Major." A hollow chuckle. "That's what I keep Garrus around for. The calibrations are just a bonus."  
  
"And me?" he asks, tentative and desperate and hopeful all at once.  
  
"Whatever you'll give," she says.  "Whatever you want to be."  
  
It's only the thought of a moment before he answers.  
  
"Here," he says. "I want to be here."  
  
She gives him a teary-eyed smile before she clicks her heels and offers him a crisp salute. "Then, as commanding officer of the Normandy, I'm damn glad to have you on board, Major."  
  
He returns her salute with his own, a smile playing on his lips. "Nowhere else I'd rather be, Commander."

  
  
\---

  
  
Repairing a relationship put on hiatus for the fate of the galaxy is easier said than done.  
  
Some days it's easy. He biotically throws two husks that try to flank her, and she turns and fires precisely one bullet into the head of one that had been sneaking up behind him. Or she orders him to move forward and he does so without question, trusting her to provide covering fire, and he clears a path for her by hurling enemies out of the way. He settles easily into the rhythm of taking up position at her six, pistol ready and biotics flaring.  
  
Some days it's harder: he hears hear walk up to his door, hesitate, then walk away, and then some minutes later he feels the tell-tale slowing of the Normandy indicating that the ground shuttle's been launched. Or they pass by each other in the mess hall and two year's worth of words unspoken clutter the air around them, pressing down on their chests and it's hard to breathe.  
  
Uncertainty is the only constant from one day to the next; he loves her, but maybe now's not the best time, and there's no time like the end times but oh, _oh,_ what if _she_ doesn't love _him--?_  
  
But he sees Garrus look after Shepard as she strides out of the battery, an unmistakably exasperated look on the turian's normally-unreadable face, and he sees Liara frown at them from the corner of his eye when he and Shepard dance around greeting each other in the mess. He listens to Vega and Joker blatantly make bets on how long this impasse would last before it went down in flames and unbridled passion, and Kaidan just sits and blushes and frowns down at the cards in his hands.  
  
Finally one day Liara calls him to her office, frustration a hard note in her voice as she hands him a datapad before sending him away with the briefest explanation of how she'd hacked Cerberus' files on Shepard, and if this isn't enough to get him to _do_ something then _Goddess,_ he's hopeless.  
  
Kaidan resists the urge to run back to the starboard observation deck, keeping up a stiff stride until he's finally able to lock the door behind him and collapse onto one of the couches.  
  
The datapad feels heavy in his hands, the surface glinting ominously in the light of the stars streaming past his window. But after one last steadying breath and a glance at the stars, he opens Shepard's dossier.

  
  
\---

  
  
[Shepard. Previously Alliance officer. Revived by Cerberus after the crash of the first Normandy through the successful Project Lazarus.]  
  
Recent extranet usage:  
  
-Start session-  
Search: Normandy crash  
Open link: Alliance News Network: 22 Dead in Mysterious Normandy Crash  
Open link: Alliance News Network: Memorial Service for Commander Shepard and Normandy Casualties to Be Held on the Citadel  
Video: Admiral Hackett's Speech during the Normandy Memorial Service (closed after 43s)  
Video: Councilor Anderson Interview Re: Normandy Crash  
Open link: Alliance News Network Photo Gallery - The Normandy Memorial Service  
View photo: Flight Lieutenant Moreau rises to salute Commander Shepard's casket  
View photo: Friends from distant worlds share in our grief  
View photo: Councilor Anderson lays a wreath on Commander Shepard's Casket  
View photo: Alliance marines fire a three-volley salute  
View photo: Lieutenant Alenko honors his fallen crewmates (Saved local copy)  
File transfer: Image_102132_036435_ANN_NorMemSer transferred from local terminal to holoframe Code No.:CN2151  
-End Session-

  
  
***

  
  
EDI, file these under 'Memos to Self':  
  
22-05-2185 19:36  
Buy dextro food for Garrus, medi-gel supplies running low  
  
24-05-2185 15:21  
Names for Space Hamster:  
Hammy the Hamster (c/o Joker)  
Ham-Ham  
Nipper (crossed out; note beside reads: sounds like nipple)  
Furball  
Furmire (crossed out several times; note beside reads: That is a terrible pun and Ash is probably facepalming up in heaven)  
Fuzzies  
Captain Hamderson  
Shenko??? (EDI's Advisory: This entry was edited by a third party from a hacked terminal. Please check and secure network.)  
  
UGH I HATE YOU GARRUS  
  
If you ever need to hack Cerberus' files, you know who to call -G (EDI's Advisory: This entry was edited by a third party from a hacked terminal. Please check and secure network.)  
  
Please stop hacking the network, Vakarian -M (EDI's Advisory: This entry was edited by a third party from a hacked terminal. Please check and secure network.)  
  
I only do it because the built-in targeting programs keep auto-calibrating the guns -G (EDI's Advisory: This entry was edited by a third party from a hacked terminal. Please check and secure network.)  
  
UGH WILL BOTH OF YOU STOP READING MY MEMOS  
  
27-05-2185 16:46  
Open credit chit account for Grunt next time we're on the Citadel so he doesn't need to keep asking for noodles money. Also, buy more medi-gel.  
  
29-05-2185 16:32  
Buy biotic energy bars for Jack. (She likes the cherry flavored ones.) Plus waaaay more medi-gel.  
  
30-05-2185 14:12  
Need to remember to feed fish. Dammit.  
  
31-05-2185 15:37  
Check in with Mordin re: swarm repellent. Also take him to see human musicals after Horizon mission.  
  
01-06-2185 21:24  
Buy more medi-gel. Dextro food supplies running low, need to restock. Transfer credits to Grunt's account. Need more hamster bedding and food. See if automatic fish-feeder available on Citadel. Check in with Anderson re: Alliance presence on Horizon.  
  
01-06-2185 22:36  
Also need to replace whiskey stock in bar. Sorry Kasumi.  
  
01-06-2185 23:17  
Brandy stockn eeds replacng to  
  
01-06-2185 23:48  
KAIDAN IS A JERK THROW HOLOFRAME OUT OF AIRLOCK ASAP  
  
02-06-2185 00:14  
See if mirandA let me havE privatr bar in quArtrrS reallyy sorrry kasimi  
  
02-06-2185 00:16  
wanna see how maby timee garrrus can say calbratin in a minitr

  
  
***

  
  
Audio Log of Captain's Quarters  
Recorded by the Normandy SR-2 Enhanced Defense Intelligence suite on 02-06-2185 00:24  
  
Garrus: C'mon Shepard, time to get you to bed.  
Shepard: Garrus. Appreciate it, but I'm not inter-- intres-- you're not my type.  
G: Spirits, Shepard, how much did you drink?  
S: Not enough.  
G: Oh, Shepard. Try to get some rest, alright? We'll be in Haestrom before 1200h.  
S: Garrus?  
G: Yeah?  
S: How'd you know it was me, back on Omega? Hell, why'd you follow me, anyway?  
G: Well, you were the only person I knew who had a habit of showing up when there was trouble. And you were doing some good. Crazy, but good. That's definitely the Shepard I know.  
S: Thanks, Garrus. For trusting me.  
G: Couldn't help it if I tried, Shepard.  
S: Garrus?  
G: Yeah?  
S: I wish Kaidan could, too.  
G: I know, Shepard. Get some rest.

  
  
***

  
  
Keystroke log: Personal Correspondence Draft created on 08-06-2185 00:45  
Reply to: kalenko@alliancemail.net  
Subject: About Horizon...  
  
Kaidan  
[ERASE LINE]  
  
Alenko  
[ERASE LINE]  
  
Lieute  
[ERASE LINE]  
  
Staff Commander Alen  
[ERASE LINE]  
  
Kaidan,  
[Progress saved]  
  
You'll probably never read this, so it shouldn't matter what I call you  
[ERASE LINE]  
  
I can still call you Kaidan, right? I don't know if you'll read this. I hope you do.  
[Progress saved]  
  
I know you're angry  
[ERASE LINE]  
  
So Horizon didn't go so well  
[ERASE LINE]  
  
I know having your dead girlfriend show up after two years isn't  
[ERASE LINE]  
  
I know I hurt you. By dying. And then by showing up. And by working with - not for! - Cerberus. I'm sorry. But you should know that none of those things were my choice.  
[Progress saved]  
  
You're angry because you think I didn't look for you. I did. You were the first person I asked about when I woke up. But nobody would tell me anything  
[PARTIAL LINE ERASE]  
  
But your files were classified and no one had any information on you. Anderson wouldn't even  
[PARTIAL LINE ERASE]  
  
Anderson couldn't tell me anything either.  
[Progress saved]  
  
Just because I didn't find you doesn't mean I wasn't looking. I couldn't just let you  
[PARTIAL LINE ERASE]  
  
You meant so much to me  
[PARTIAL LINE ERASE]  
  
I missed you so  
[PARTIAL LINE ERASE]  
  
Of course I wanted to see you. But between gathering intel on the Collectors and building up a team, it just didn't happen.  
[Progress saved]  
  
I know the past two years have  
[ERASE LINE]  
  
I can't imagine what the past two years  
[ERASE LINE]  
  
Two years is a long time, I know. I won't pretend to understand what you'd been through after I went down with the Normandy. But I know you - or, I used to - and you were probably too hard on yourself. None of what happened was your fault.  
[Progress saved]  
  
And I don't blame you if  
[ERASE LINE]  
  
Although it was just a few weeks for me when I saw you on Hori  
[ERASE LINE]  
  
I want you to know that I didn't expect you to wait  
[ERASE LINE]  
  
I hope you took care of yourself. And I hope that you at least tried to be happy. I want that for you. You deserve it.  
[Progress saved]  
  
And I know you don't trust Cerberus. Neither do I, but they have the resources to stop the Collectors, and I can't afford to be picky. I still don't like working with them, but Joker and Chakwas and Garrus and Tali are here and they have my back. I'll be fine.  
[Progress saved]  
  
I'll admit that taking down the Collectors is risky, but it needs to be done. I don't know if I'll make it through this  
[PARTIAL LINE ERASE]  
  
No matter what happens  
[PARTIAL LINE ERASE]  
  
I'll try to be careful.  
[Progress saved]  
  
I lov  
[PARTIAL LINE ERASE]  
  
I miss you  
[PARTIAL LINE ERASE]  
  
I hope you do the same.  
[Progress saved]  
  
\--Shepard  
  
[SAVE DRAFT AND EXIT]

  
  
\---

  
  
Kaidan lies across the couch in the observation deck, clutching the datapad to his chest like a lifeline. Cleansing tears stream down his cheeks as he heaves a sigh of relief, the tangled knots of his and Shepard's shared history unfurling like a winding thread stretching across the lightyears between them, unbroken and whole and leading him home.

  
  
\---

  
  
In a balcony on the Citadel, Kaidan bares his heart to Shepard for the second time, and for one second he forgets to breathe, before Shepard smiles and takes his hand. The upward quirk of the left side of her mouth is maddeningly familiar and beloved, a beacon guiding him home as he leans in to kiss her.  
  
He's vaguely aware of some of the other patrons applauding, but in that moment he only cares about the feel of Shepard's lips against his own, the warmth of her breath across his cheek.  
  
(She tastes the same; of course she does. He wonders why he ever doubted her.)  
  
That night he sneaks into her quarters and finds himself amazed at the ease with which she settles into his arms. He looks over her shoulder at the picture of him she'd returned to its place on her desk, and he's overcome with the urge to kiss her _right fucking now._  
  
"You waited," is a reverent whisper against her mouth. She smiles into the kiss, pulls away, looks up at him with starlit eyes.  
  
And she sings, softly: _"Don't sit under the apple tree with anyone else but me..."_  
  
He kisses her under the stars as he loses himself in the muscle-memory motions of curling around her body, fitting against her shape, so different yet not, new but familiar, warm and beloved and home.

  
  
\---

  
  
Fire rains down over London, people are being gunned down left and right, Reapers are descending in full force, and all Kaidan can think is:  
  
_No._  
  
_Please._  
  
_Not again._  
  
(He remembers: _Kaidan, go. Now!_ and it takes all of Garrus's strength to hold him back from rushing back into the fray, injured as he is.)  
  
The Normandy hums beneath his feet, and Earth and Shepard disappear below them as they rush toward the stars. He collapses in a heap on the floor of the shuttle bay as Dr. Chakwas tends to him. They linger on the fringes of battle until Hackett orders them to leave. A shudder runs through the hull of the Normandy, the metal groaning as they gather speed, as if the ship itself was reluctant to leave its commander behind.  
  
Lying in the med-bay bed, Kaidan roars in grief as he feels the Normandy jump to FTL, leaping from star to star and away from Earth, from Shepard, from his _home_ in all sense of the word. His failure presses down on him like a blanket as Chakwas pumps him full of meds, and before he unconsciousness pulls him under he imagines Shepard's face turning away from him toward a bright, blinding light.

  
  
\---

  
  
It's hard to tell where they are without the nav systems.  
  
EDI's been offline since they hit the final relay that sent them careening into this planet, and it was only Joker's mad flight skills that kept them mostly intact. Repair goes slowly. Traynor focuses on bringing the comm system back online, while Tali and the engineers struggle to repair the engine and get it running with what little fuel and eezo they have left.  
  
He leads a scouting party with Garrus and James to see what they can scrounge on this planet, but although they find a reliable water source and some questionably edible fruit there isn't much in the way of resources for repairing a warship, not to mention food for Garrus and Tali. They trudge back to where Steve is waiting in the shuttle and load what little they've found before heading back to the Normandy.  
  
The next few weeks are a blur of repair efforts and struggles to survive: Garrus and Tali ration the stores of dextro food that's left, Traynor's comm repairs are hit-and-miss, although she does manage to pinpoint their location to Eden Prime, and Kaidan takes it upon himself to carry EDI's body down to the darkened AI core, not looking at Joker's solemn face when he gathers it from her seat in the bridge.  
  
(They each soldier on in their own ways.)  
  
They keep fighting, although it's like fighting blind without Shepard there to ground them, but they fight, they survive, they struggle to fly again on broken wings, lost little birds looking for the way home.  
  
They manage to make contact with the few colonists left, who are only too happy to help the crew of the famed Normandy, and things are finally starting to look up. One day Hackett manages to contact then through a choppy channel and they receive the news: the Reapers are gone. Earth is safe.  
  
(He's never doubted for a second that she could.)  
  
Anderson is dead.  
  
(May his soul find rest and watch over us all.)  
  
Shepard has not been found.  
  
(Missing isn't dead-- but she was missing over Alchera and she was _definitely_ dead-- she has always been a survivor-- she has always sacrificed--)  
  
He tries to steel himself for the probability that she's gone, for good this time. He tries to remember the motions of grief once more, calling up the familiar numbness, but...  
  
But.  
  
(Missing. Isn't. Dead.)  
  
It's this conviction that pushes him to call off the little memorial they'd held, telling everyone to get back to work while he hides Shepard's name plaque in a safe place in her quarters.  
  
He thinks, maybe if it isn't official, it isn't true.  
  
_Missing isn't dead._

  
  
\---

  
  
When they're about seven more full days of repairs, by Tali's estimate, before they can safely take off, they receive the news: Shepard's been found.  
  
_Yes, she's alive._  
  
_No, she hasn't woken up._  
  
_No, we don't know when. Or if._  
  
But it's enough.  
  
They finish the repairs in three days.

  
  
\---

  
  
Earth is a long way away by conventional FTL speeds, but they make it there eventually.  
  
Shepard looks so small in the little hospital bed, unconscious and more bandage than skin, but most importantly, still breathing. Miranda's pulled some strings and gotten her a solo room, which both Alliance and civilians alike had enthusiastically agreed to, despite the shortage of space.  
  
And so Kaidan settles in and makes himself at home. During the day he goes out, coordinating search-and-rescue ops, planning reconstructions, helping with the relief effort. When night falls he returns to Shepard's room, writes reports, feeds Shenko the hamster, reads her bits of news from the reconstruction. Sometimes when he comes back, Liara's there, or Tali, or Garrus - all of them sitting there, reading to her, or talking to her, or joking with her as if she'll wake up any moment.  
  
And sure, it takes six months - six of the longest months of his life - but she does.  
  
He comes home one day (and it's strange to think of the hospital as _home,_ until he realizes it's not the hospital as much as it is her) and he says, as he usually does: "Hey, Shepard."  
  
What he doesn't expect is: "Hey, Kaidan."  
  
He freezes just inside the doorway, halfway through shrugging out of his jacket, before he regains enough of his senses to look toward the bed.  
  
And Shepard is there, eyes open and trained on his, the left side of her mouth quirked up in that familiar, maddening, _beloved_ smile as she says: "You're here."  
  
He falls to his knees at her bedside, happy tears running unashamedly down his face as he gently clasps a bandaged hand and whispers: "There's nowhere else I'd rather be."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this fic originally started out as me wondering 'why does Shep's LI always call them Shepard?' and 'how do you go from pointing guns at each other to going on a date?' and somehow ended up with this ode to the trilogy-spanning aspect of the Shepard/Virmire Survivor romance. 
> 
> Ah well. Hope you guys enjoyed it, at least!


End file.
